‘Refineries’ privatisation ‘ll unlock oil, gas sector’

Transferring the ownership of the nation’s four refineries to private investors will unleash unimaginable economic transformation, the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), has said.

Its Director-General, Benjamin Dikki, lamented that the continued resistance of oil workers prevented the economy from tapping from the almost limitless opportunities that privatisation would have opened the industry to.

He said: “I want to emphasise that in the oil and gas industry, we have locked up a lot of potential that Nigeria’s economy has. There are more than 10 spinoff industries that can spring up using the by-products of the refineries. We are not utilising these things. Most of those things are imported. Once we get the refineries working, there will be other spinoff industries that will come up from there. It will create jobs, create products that Nigeria will sell locally and internationally and grow the Nigerian economy.

“Sometimes I wonder, ‘can’t we and labour sit down and see the mood of this country and collaborate to unleash, to open up that sector and grow the Nigerian economy’. And related to that, we also need to expeditiously, aggressively handle the issue of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).”

Dikki told The Nation that when the government announced that it was considering the privatisation of the refineries, the oil workers acting under the aegis of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) workers and the Petroleum and Natural Gas senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) threatened to shut the refineries.

He said the Minister of Labour chaired a meeting where the Minister of Power and the Permanent Secretary; the Minister of Petroleum and other high-ranking officials in the ministries were present and we dialogued with the two labour unions.

“They told us that they were not averse to government looking at other options or business model for handling the privatisation, and we said okay to them.

“The government is conscious if we don’t have a unified voice between NUPENG and PENGASSAN about the privatisation then there is a risk. This is because they can put through to shutdown the economy and no responsible president will want to create pains for his people through a policy that can be avoided, delayed, or you look at other options,” he said.

He however said the oil workers have all agreed that there is need to privatise the ailing refineries, adding that they have realised the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) is not comprehensively done and there is need to resuscitate the refineries. He added that there are other investment that need to be in place, and they are quite to take cognizance that government is not in a position or rather it is not it’s priority to raise those kind of money that will completely revamp the refineries.‘’

Dikki added: “The labour unions have realised also that privatisation is inevitable. What they are craving for is that we should have the LNG model, which is to say that government should still have a stake, labour should still have a stake in the refineries. And we are not opposed to it. And we have told them that it has been a longstanding policy of the NCP that labour unions should have shares in the privatised companies.”

And we gave them the example of Eleme Petrochemical -shares were reserved for staff, we got them to set up a trust. The trust accessed loan from the bank and raised finances to pay for the shares. The shares were now paid for from the dividend from Eleme Petrochemical shares.

“So, the government is not aversed to structuring something that will allow labour to have a stake in the refineries. But you see, this is a politically charged environment now and everything is politicised. So, we are conscious also not to delve into this thing and it gets politicised and people misread the meaning and issues are raised that shouldn’t arise.

“So, the refineries will only be privatised when government and labour are 100 per cent on the same page. If that happens today, we will commence the process today. If labour comes out today and tells the government that we are not against the privatisation of the refineries we will cooperate, the government will take up the privatisation of the refineries.”